Lifestyle
Powering your Tesla and Home through SolarCity’s Solar Panel System
Solar power can get you some solar gains to reduce your electricity bill without costing you anything while helping to save the planet.
Solar Gains
Even with crazy electricity prices in Massachusetts, driving a Tesla is 38% of the cost of driving a gas-powered vehicle. But unlike oil and gasoline, you can generate your own power through renewable solar energy.
After ordering my Tesla Model S I started looking into solar panels for my home. I only looked at a single provider, SolarCity, for a couple of reasons. First, SolarCity is dominating the solar residential market with over 19% in market share. Second, it’s associated with Elon Musk and without him I wouldn’t even have the Tesla. I didn’t know much about SolarCity’s business model or approach – I simply filled out a contact form online and took it from there.
SolarCity Consultation & On-Site Evaluation
The process starts with a qualification call with a Solar City sales person to. They ask whether you own your home, what your electric usage is like, if you have a condo association and a few other random questions. They pull up your home address through Google maps and verify whether your location qualifies for their solar program. Here in Massachusetts only 1 in 7 (14%) of homes qualify for solar. Disqualification happens for reasons such as not having enough space on the roof for the panels, too much tree coverage or wrong facing roof lines.
The next step is to arrange an on-site visit of your property which for me lasted just over 2 hours. The SolarCity representative asked about our preference in solar panel placement (i.e. not on the front of the house for aesthetic reasons) and with that they were able to suggest areas of the roof where the solar panels would be most optimal. They pulled up a Google maps image of the home and produced a rendering of the home with the proposed solar cell placements. A custom report was generated that outlines the solar panel dimensions, numbers of solar cells to be installed, estimated production time and distribution of sunlight onto the solar panels while factoring in the direction of sunlight. It was quite an impressive report.
SolarCity analyzed my actual electricity usage history and was able to calculate the annual kWh consumed along with the cost for that energy. They use historical weather data in your city/state and look for weather patterns over the last several years, in order to estimate how much real coverage you will get from the solar panels.
Based on SolarCity’s evaluation, their proposed solution would cover 88% of my electricity needs and cut my average monthly bill of $377 to $45. When the green line is above the yellow, you’re essentially producing more solar derived electricity than you need, and as a result you have to accumulate credits within your account. This big drop in monthly electricity cost is the “bait” portion of the sales pitch. Lots of focus is placed on the amount of energy that can be recouped, but this doesn’t all come for free.
The SolarCity system designed for our house costs about $144k in total. With green credits in place (going to SolarCity), the cost ends up to be approximately $68k.
They don’t give you $68k of hardware for free — SolarCity’s business model is pretty simple:
“Take dollars going to power companies and divert most of it to SolarCity while giving the homeowner enough incentive to do so.”
SolarCity provides you with free hardware and then charges you a rate based on the amount of solar power used. The amount of solar energy placed back into the grid offsets your electricity usage and bill, but can never exceed (at least in Massachusetts) the bill to the point where you are paid for generating energy. In other words, you’ll want to design a system that provides as close to 100% coverage of your electric bill as possible without going under or over. Going under means you’re paying the higher price per kWh through your standard electricity provider while going over means that you’re paying for excess generation of power while not being able to use it.
Reducing Electricity Bills with Solar Energy
SolarCity does not want to sell you a system. They want to enter into a long term (20 year) agreement with you that requires you to buy power from the solar panels they place into your home. They provide a few options to do this:
- Pay a medium rate for the generated power, but with no increase year over year.
- Pay a lower rate for the generated power, but with a 2.9% increase year over year.
- Pay nothing for generated power, but with a big up front pre-payment at the lowest rate.
All their rates start lower than your current electricity rate. Lets look at how a 2,500 kWh / month usage breaks down:
- With Electricity provider: 2,500 kWh x 16.7¢/kWh = $417.50
- With SolarCity: 2,500 kWh x 88% x 14.8¢/kWh + 2,500 kWh x 12% x 16.7¢/kWh = $373.60
The 88% offset number can vary when you get to the actual implementation, but the rep said the estimates are usually conservative.
Choosing option #1 would give an immediate 10.5% savings which is far from the 88% savings they claim to give. The utility company was receiving $417.50 for my energy usage, but with the proposed SolarCity system, the utility company’s cut would diminish to $48 while SolarCity would receive $325.60. SolarCity and the homeowner wins; the power company loses revenue, but gets relief on the grid and even more relief during the hotter months when the grid is the most strained.
Electric companies are hiking rates year over year. The rep quoted an average annual rate hike of 4.8% in Massachusetts, but taking a deeper look at a historical rate chart for my area, I saw an annual increase of 5.7% since 2008. Assuming this same growth pattern over the next 10 years, SolarCity’s solar panel system should provide a 40% savings in energy costs in the later years.
The choice in SolarCity plans really depends on how long you expect to stay in your house. If you’re only staying for a few more years, go with the one with the lowest rate and no upfront payment. If this is the last house you’ll own and you can afford to, then pre-pay for the system. Otherwise (like me), go in the middle. The break-even point between plan 1 and plan 2 is 8 years.
SolarCity’s Solar Panel System in the Long Run
My system has an estimated production of 23,830 kWh per year with a fixed cost to me at 14.8¢/kWh. Total payout to SolarCity for use of the solar energy will be $70,536.80 over 20 years. Since the cost of the solar panel system costs them around $68K after credits, you’re essentially paying for the whole system over the 20 years, but at the end you don’t own it.
There are a few options that can be had after the 20 year mark:
- Renew for some additional 5 year periods with different numbers/rates.
- Upgrade system to something newer with different numbers/rates.
- Have them take it all away and put the house back to pre-solar state (this is totally free to do).
There are a few other things to note:
- They guarantee your entire roof from leaks for the first year after install.
- The entire system is insured, maintained, owned by them — anything breaks and they fix it for free (labor + parts).
- They’re incentivized to make it work, and work well, because they get paid on energy production and usage. That’s an expensive set of gear (almost $150K in our case) and something you don’t have to worry about.
- The agreements etc are fully transferable to a new home buyer.
- They have applications to monitor power generation through your mobile and desktop devices.
How does SolarCity make money? I don’t know their whole business model but there are a few things you can infer:
- I don’t buy the quoted costs of the gear and it seems others, like Forbes, don’t either. Perhaps the retail price for the solar set up would be $144K, but as the largest solar installer in the US, SolarCity undoubtedly is getting some huge price breaks.
- The power companies are mandated to produce a certain amount of green energy and when they can’t there are fines to be had. Similar to how Tesla sells their earned green credits back to the power companies. I’ve seen estimates that for every Tesla sold, 5 green credits are created worth a total of $35,000 that other auto companies buy from Tesla. So not only do they generate $100k in revenue from the car, they receive an additional $35k through the green credits.
From the outside it’s really hard to tell what SolarCity’s long term business strategy will be. To me, it’s simple. I have some high value equipment on my roof offsetting real electric rates and a contract for a fixed price over the long term with no real downside. I’ll let them worry about their business and I’ll just worry about my house.
I started down this path because of the Tesla. I’ve averaged 90 miles a day over the last 6 months in my ICE car. Using Tesla’s calculator that’s equivalent to 29.7 kWh/day or 10,841 kWh/year of energy that I’ll be using (about $1,800 worth if I get it straight from the power company). Still a big savings over $6,000/year in gas and even more when combined with solar. The $1,800 goes to about $1,600 this year ($200 savings), and 10 years from now I’m saving 50% over what I’d normally be paying to my utility company.
Going solar for me was pretty much a no-brainer. Gas prices are going up and so are electricity prices. Solar provides cleaner power at less cost with no upfront fees and no upkeep that I’m responsible for, and it will help offset the additional cost of electricity from my new Tesla and make it even more cost effective over time.
RELATED: SolarCity Struggles: My Three Part Series on the Journey Taken with SolarCity
Elon Musk
Tesla FSD is about to know your specific house and neighborhood better than any map
Tesla confirmed it is building a feature that lets you teach your car where to go.
Tesla is building a feature that will let drivers talk to their car in plain language and teach it exactly what to do, with the vehicle remembering those instructions for every future trip. Tesla VP of AI Software Ashok Elluswamy confirmed it this week on X after a user pointed out one of FSD’s most persistent real-world limitations is that the system has no way to receive contextual instructions the way a human driver would.
“FSD would be twice as useful in neighborhoods if I could actually talk to the car and tell it which driveway to pull into, the same way I would with a person driving me home. Right now, there isn’t really an input for telling Tesla what color the house is or giving it specific context like that. Google Maps is also notorious for putting pins on houses that aren’t actually yours.” Tesla owner Chris further noted, “It would be so cool if I could talk to the car while going down my street and say something like, ‘It’s the white house on the left, just past that SUV,’ and then have FSD remember that for next time.”
FSD would be twice as useful in neighborhoods if I could actually talk to the car and tell it which driveway to pull into, the same way I would with a person driving me home.
Right now, there isn’t really an input for telling Tesla what color the house is or giving it specific…
— Chris (@ChrissGPT) July 8, 2026
This feature would carry more weight than it might seem. Grok has been available inside Tesla vehicles since July 2025, expanded to European vehicles in February 2026, and gained a hands-free “Hey Grok” wake word with location-based reminders and natural-language navigation in the Spring 2026 update. But up to this point, Grok has had no authority over how FSD actually drives. Lane changes, braking, speed, and parking maneuvers remain entirely within FSD’s autonomous decision-making loop. What Elluswamy confirmed is that the next step pushes Grok into a supervisor role, one that translates spoken intent directly into driving decisions.
Tesla teases greater Grok FSD integration and ‘Banish’ feature ‘in about 3 months’
Elluswamy acknowledged at a January 2026 conference that while fully integrated voice control is on Tesla’s roadmap, “it opens up an entire area of testing that we have to do. For example, you shouldn’t be able to tell the car to crash, and it shouldn’t crash.” Elon Musk subsequently confirmed on June 23 that Grok voice commands will pass to FSD’s planning layer by September 2026, a three month timeline from confirmation to deployment.
The deeper significance is what this does for Tesla’s AI training flywheel. Every time an owner corrects FSD with a spoken instruction and the car learns and remembers it, that interaction becomes a data point covering an edge case that no simulation or scripted test could have generated. A fleet of millions of Tesla vehicles crowdsourcing hyper-local contextual knowledge, which driveway, which gate entrance, which side of the street, builds a layer of geographic and behavioral intelligence that competitors without a comparable fleet simply cannot replicate at the same speed or scale.
As Teslarati has reported, Tesla’s Cybercab and robotaxi operations have expanded to Miami following the Austin launch, with rider profiles already collecting preference data. Voice-taught contextual instructions linked to individual rider profiles means a Cybercab could eventually know before it arrives exactly which entrance to use, where to wait, and how to navigate the final hundred feet of any trip it has made before.
Lifestyle
Tesla app update makes Robotaxi ownership make a lot more sense
Tesla’s app now shows a live indicator when your car is actively driving itself.
A recent Tesla app update, released last week (4.58.5), gives visibility on whether a vehicle is navigating in its semi-autonomous mode or being drive by a human driver. The updated app now displays a live “Self-Driving” indicator in bright blue text directly beneath the vehicle’s speed readout whenever Full Self-Driving is actively engaged, along with the signature glowing blue navigation path that FSD users see on the main touchscreen. It is a small visual update with meaningful implications for how Tesla owners monitor their vehicles remotely.
The feature was first spotted in the wild by X user Jordan Camina, who shared video of a Hardware 3 Model S displaying the new animation through the app while driving. That detail is significant because it confirms the update is not limited to newer HW4 vehicles. It works across hardware generations, and Tesla confirmed it will eventually support all vehicles regardless of chip platform once both the app and vehicle software are updated. The vehicle side requires software version 2026.20.6.1, which has reached nearly 40% of the fleet so far, as monitored by NotaTeslaApp.
The feature makes the most practical sense when viewed through the lens of Tesla’s expanding robotaxi operation. In a robotaxi context, the owner of a vehicle generating ride revenue has a direct financial and safety interest in knowing whether their car is operating under autonomous control at any given moment. The app’s new FSD indicator gives fleet owners exactly that visibility, the same way a logistics company monitors whether a delivery driver is following the planned route. It also carries implications for Tesla’s insurance model. Tesla’s own insurance product prices premiums in part based on FSD engagement rates, and real-time visibility into when FSD is active creates a feedback loop that could eventually tie directly into policy pricing. For individual owners who have opted their personal vehicles into the robotaxi network, the update effectively turns the Tesla app into a fleet management dashboard, one that tells you whether your car is earning money, whether it is driving itself to do it, and whether everything is operating the way it should from wherever you happen to be.
Tesla expands Robotaxi to Florida, marking its third state for autonomy
As Teslarati has reported, Tesla launched unsupervised robotaxi rides in Miami this summer, a milestone that makes a remote FSD status indicator significantly more practical than a cosmetic feature. When a vehicle is operating as a robotaxi without a driver present, the owner or fleet operator needs a reliable way to confirm autonomy is engaged. The app now provides exactly that.
As noted by NotATeslaApp, The update also arrived alongside a hint buried in the same app version that Tesla plans to use the cabin camera to verify driver identity before FSD can be activated. Pairing identity verification with a live autonomy status indicator points toward the infrastructure Tesla is building for a fleet of driverless vehicles that owners can monitor the way you would track a package delivery.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The Boring Company’s Prufrock MB2 is commissioned and ready to mine beneath Nashville’s streets.
The Boring Company’s second tunnel boring machine, Prufrock MB2, is officially ready to dig in Nashville. The company confirmed the news on X, posting: “Prufrock-MB2 is ready to mine in Nashville! MB2 commissioning is complete, including the brief 11 rpm rotation shown here. Will MB2 catch up to MB1, who had quite the head start? And Prufrock-MB3 ships in August!”
MB2 arrives with meaningful improvements over its predecessor. Lessons learned from the launch and operation of MB1 have already been applied to MB2 to improve efficiency and prepare the machine for launch.
Traditional tunnel boring machines operate in a stop-and-go cycle, digging roughly five feet, halt, erect precast concrete segments to line the tunnel wall, then resume. That repeated interruption is one of the main reasons conventional tunneling is slow and expensive. Prufrock is designed to install the tunnel liner simultaneously with mining, eliminating the need to stop every five feet. The machine also skips the need for excavated launch pits. Prufrock arrives on a truck, tilts down, and launches into the ground within 24 hours. And when the tunnel is complete, it emerges from the ground and drives to its next launch site on a trailer, eliminating the need for expensive cranes or pit excavation. The machine is also fully electric and runs with zero people in the tunnel during normal operations, controlled remotely from a surface operations center.
Prufrock-MB2 is ready to mine in Nashville! MB2 commissioning is complete, including the brief 11 rpm rotation shown here.
Will MB2 catch up to MB1, who had quite the head start?
And Prufrock-MB3 ships in August! pic.twitter.com/TTrMql2aRg
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) June 17, 2026
It won’t be long before we hear of another major update on The Boring Company’s Music City Loop project – a planned underground transit network beneath Nashville that would move passengers in electric vehicles through a series of tunnels at highway speeds, and bypassing surface traffic entirely. Nashville was selected in part because of its strong rock conditions that suits the Prufrock machines well, and relatively less regulatory hurdles.
Progress has been steady on multiple fronts. All 37 permits and approvals required ahead of tunneling have been obtained, out of 45 total. Key wins include a fully executed TDOT tunnel permit authorizing 25 miles of tunnel, unanimous airport authority approval for a Nashville International Airport station, and the city’s first residential station agreement serving downtown tower residents.
With MB1 already tunneling, MB2 now commissioned, and MB3 shipping in August, Nashville is becoming something of a live proving ground for scaled tunnel boring. The broader ambition is not limited to one city. The Boring Company’s stated goal is to make underground transportation a practical alternative to surface roads across major metro areas. Nashville is one of many cities, including a successful Las Vegas tunnel system, where that idea is being put to the test at real speed.
Tesla FSD is about to know your specific house and neighborhood better than any map
The secret behind Tesla’s Cybercab Gold goes well beyond just the color
